Hitachi to ditch CRT monitors

Everyone wants flats

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Updated Hitachi is stopping making CRT monitors, and will just concentrate on flat panel displays.

It will stop production by the end of 2001.

The company said "the sluggishness of the desktop PC market has reduced demand for CRTs for PC monitors, leading to a sharp fall in prices. Moreover, with future demand expected to shift to LCD monitors, there are no prospects for growth of the monitor CRT market."

With 14.1-inch TFT displays now selling for under £300 in the UK, it's probably right.

For the financial year ending 31 March, Hitachi's CRT sales revenues were 59 billion yen ($476.58 million). It had made five million of them in factories in Malaysia, Singapore, and Japan.

Hitachi's had been trying to breathe some life into CRTs by making higher value products such as short-length CRTs, flat-face CRTs and large-screen CRTs for PC monitors. But they haven't really worked. ®

Update

Pete Gamby, editor of trade news letter Display Monitor, has written in to say: "Hitachi gave up manufacturing CRT monitors a long time ago and sub contracted it to Compal (amongst others). The latest
announcement is more significant in so far as the company is now to stop making the tubes. This leaves Sony, Toshiba and Mitsubishi as Japanese suppliers of CRT technology.